Archives for October 2008

NO, we are not auctioning off our children. But after tonight, we are considering selling our 3 to get these two.. just kidding. relax. don’t report us.

OK… but for reals check this out. We have a friend from high school who has a blog and a mean talent with a sewing machine and she’s combined the two to change the world by creating her own little private e-bay of sorts. She’s raised money for the International Justice Mission several times and right now, she’s doing one to help us out.

You can hit up her blog here if you’d like a beautiful apron for yourself or a friend as a gift to both yourself and our family! HURRY. AUCTION ENDS REALLY SOON.

Right now the highest bidder is a friend of mine, Neely who is also adopting! You should go to her blog and buy these cool shirts too and help her family out. Shannon and I both have one and we need to get some for our kids now.

Well, we are working hard to raise the funds we’ll need to get our kids home from Africa. Here’s an update on the process on our end:

All in all, it’s brought in something like $1400 for us. Sweet way to raise funds and bless Uganda in a bunch of ways!

#1. I LOVE WORKING WITH WOOD.

My dad and I are going to be building some sheds to get the shovels and bikes and stuff out of my garage over Thanksgiving week. I should then have a wood shop again in our garage with some space to build. First up: a desk/wall unit for Billy and Jake.

But no matter how awesome I get at woodwork, I doubt I’ll ever have the time or devotion to make one of these. Crazy. Crazy stinking awesome! I bet Jesus is proud of this guy. I want a 700 horse power wooden car… sorta. Both scares the hell out of me and inspires me at the same time.

Watch these 3 one minute videos. The first is a description of this grad school project. The next two are the freaking building and splicing of a wooden loom they made for the exterior material of this project. Ridiculous. These guys are amazing.

#2. I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY.

One of the first things I ever bought as a child was a pentax changeable lense camera. I wanted one like my dad had, so we went to this camera swap meet thingy and bought this 1950’s camera with screw in lenses. I loved it. I used it all through high school and even developed my own film in a series of photography classes I took.

When I graduated from high school, I spent $1000 I had saved up (my parents were not happy with me- I did it while they were on vacation and I was home alone) to buy my first auto-focus SLR- a Minolta. I used it all the way up until about 18 months ago when I got my first digital SLR- a Sony a100 and have been addicted to digital photography and photoshop ever since.

I then walked past my friends computer today to notice a pretty sweet desktop background.

I asked him here he got it, and he said he’d send me the link. Yeah… well it was a photographers dream link. Check out this for some awesome pictures you can dump in your desktop backgrounds or on your mulitmedia slide shows for free. Stinkin awesome! I hope I become a photographer like that someday.

I think I might have to actually start uploading some of my pics to istockphoto. I just have to make myself make the time to do it. I’ll let you know if and when I get my some of my content live.

Confession: I feel fat most days. I have ever since my feshman year in college pretty much.

I think it’s a combination of the culture I live in, the proximity of my youth ministry to the beach, the skinny people I see, the fact that most of the high school students I work with have a metabolism that has no signs of slowing down yet, the truth, and yatta yatta.

Well, a few weeks ago for a DMV physical and an adoption physical combo dealeo, they drew some blood to take some tests to make sure I’m not a crack addict. After the tests came back, they said my cholesterol is great and I’m not doing drugs and that my liver was showing some readings they did not like and called me back in to take the test again.

Today they called me to tell my liver is working fine and something about copper is great too. However they want me on a “low fat” diet cuz evidently they think I might be storing fat on my liver which is making some other reading about something be higher than they want to to be. I don’t have diabetes, I don’t drink alcohol more than about 1x a month, and I don’t qualify as obese, but they say I’m slightly overweight and storing it on my liver.

WHAT?

I swear, I couldn’t gain a pound in high school if I tried. Now, if I eat a pound of food, 1/2 of it goes straight to my chin and the other half is evidently chillin’ on my liver. Which she says isn’t much to worry about, but they basically want to try this rat caught in a trap lab experiment on me.

Oh well, here I go. 2 months of “low fat diet”. I’m gonna get ripped too, just to show the doctor how freakin’ fit I am. Then I’m gonna walk the beach naked and get a tatoo of a skinny liver.

I went on my first field trip of the school year yesterday with Jake’s first grade class. We walked from his school down the hill to the library and the fire station and back.

Here’s what I learned:

#1. The library in our community has free wireless and lets you eat inside cuz they have a cafe too. I just might need to go there to study soon. They have some nice tables too. I kinda dug it. It surprised me.

#2. I know several firemen. Here’s what I’ve concluded about them over the years that I’ve also confirmed yesterday:

• they will risk their life to save yours
• they like it when stuff burns- they are kinda pyromaniacs in recovery. Don’t misunderstand, they don’t want you or anyone else harmed, but they secretly hope your dryer catches your house on fire and that they get to swing an axe and break stuff and make your house really wet.
• they are part prankster.
• they like to eat and excercise. Some more of one than another.
• they are neat freaks. For whatever reason, they love their stuff organized to the point of everything has a place and in it’s place at all times.
• they have a schedule that makes me jealous. I wish I could work “x” hours on and then get 4 days off. I think I would like to lobby for the whole world to go on that schedule. Let’s all work a grip and sleep in our office and then let’s go play at the beach for several days and do it all over again. Sounds awesome.

#3. Jake has a lot of energy.

Here’s the photos of me and my youngest son for like 3 more months. That’s weird to think about.